I first read Danusha Laméris in The Sun magazine and knew I’d found a name to watch for. So I was delighted this week to see her poem “Fictional Characters” appear in The Writers Almanac this week. For those of you who also love her voice, here are some more poems from her:

I always admire poets who can pull off the traditional forms. Last week I gave you a sestina, this week I give you Aileen Bassis’s “Bulgarian Pantoum” at Literary Bohemian.

If you’re not signed up to receive a poem from the Academy of American Poets every day, you should be. Then you won’t miss out on poems like “Another Country” by Ryan Teitman. (Go here to sign up for a poem every morning.)

“Every time I have set out to translate the book (or story, or hopelessly long essay) that exists in such brilliant detail on the big screen on my limbic system onto a piece of paper (which, let’s face it, was once a towering tree crowned with leaves and a home to birds), I grieve for my own lack of talent and intelligence. Every. Single. Time. Were I smarter, more gifted, I could pin down a closer facsimile of the wonders I see. I believe that, more than anything else, this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers. Forgiveness, therefore, is key. I can’t write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing.” – Ann Patchett, The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life

“Our poems can never satisfy us, since they are at best a diminished echo of a song that maybe once or twice in a lifetime we’ve heard and keep trying to recall.” – Stanley Kunitz, The Collected Poems

And yet I keep at it. One day, one line, one word if only for a second it will be like clear water. Like Schwarzeis. Just once, I will be transparent, and the thing on the page will be the thing in my head.